


Strong Heart

by fraternite



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Grieving, Post-Raven's Roost, Spoilers for Magnus's backstory, no other spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-30 21:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10884858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/fraternite
Summary: In which Magnus loses a fight, pets a dog, and tries to learn how to keep on living.





	Strong Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [witticaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/witticaster/gifts).



The iron-studded fist crashes into Magnus’s temple and for a moment he sees stars.  He staggers backward; flexes his fingers against the pins and needles that run down his arms all the way to his fingertips.  He shakes his head and a broad, greenish face swims into view, its lips curled into an ugly snarl.  Magnus feels his own mouth mirror it as he clenches his fists.

An uppercut to the asshole’s jaw and an a quick knee to the groin, and the orc crumples at Magnus’s feet.  For just a moment, the heat of victory shivers through Magnus’s blood--no emotion, just pure animal adrenalin--but before he even has time to catch his breath, the guy’s three friends step up, leather-belted and bulging with muscles and smug brawl-readiness.

And it was what Magnus expected, really--what he was practically _asking for_ when he stepped up to an orc a head taller than him and made some crack about . . . he can’t actually remember what they’re fighting over.  It didn’t seem important, not even when he made the remark.  This, here, this is the part that matters--the singing of his blood in his ears and the copper taste of blood from his split lip and three yellow-eyed thugs grinning down at him.

Magnus feel neither fear nor excitement.  He sets his teeth and launches himself at the biggest one.

 

Half an hour later, Magnus’s brain has finally pieced itself back together enough to allow him to push himself up to his knees.  He stays there for a minute, staring down at the imprint of his face in the mud, waiting for shame or relief or . . . or _something_ to rush in.  There’s nothing.  Just the empty, raw shell of a heart that he’s been carrying around with him for three weeks now.

All of a sudden he’s crying, heavy sobs choked by the blood still running down the back of his throat from his probably-broken nose.  The sky is starting to get dark overhead and the noise from the inn behind him is swelling with the dinner rush and Magnus is on the ground in the stableyard, clenching his battered hands in the mud and wailing like a baby.  Fat tears run down his nose and drip onto the ground, mixing with his blood and drool in the hollow imprint of his face.  The animal sounds coming from his raw throat aren’t enough, _nothing will ever be enough_ , to scrape away a single ounce of the huge raging grief, and he sobs in desperation because he doesn’t know how he can do it a single minute longer, not like this--but there’s _nothing_ he can do to escape it, either.

If this were a story, like the ones he used to enchant his nieces with, like the ones he would have told his _own_ children one day, this would be the moment when something changes.  The hero at his lowest point, alone and without hope, meets a guide--discovers a secret--sees a glimmer of light that points the way out of the dungeon.  But this isn’t a story, and nothing changes.  There’s no rescue here, no miracle, no hope.  There’s just Magnus, bruised and bleeding, on his hands and knees in the mud behind a cheap backcountry inn.

The moment passes.  Magnus pulls himself back together, staggers to his feet, rinses his face in the trough next to the kitchen door.  He goes back inside and sullenly takes a bench by the fire.  Eats dinner.  Drinks too much.  Falls asleep on a lumpy mattress in a bed that’s too short and too empty.  This is his life now.

The moment passes--but the grief doesn’t change.

 

“You’re going over the pass?  Alone?”  The innkeeper is a professional and she doesn’t say “idiot,” but Magnus hears it in her tone of voice all the same.

The guest’s nod is a little wobbly, but decisive.  “Nobody else is crossing in the next week.  I’ve asked around.”

It’s no wonder, Magnus thinks, turning back to his bowl of oatmeal.  It’s still very early in the spring, and the roads are a mess.  Up in the mountains, it’s just warm enough that the snow has begun to melt, revealing all the rocks and potholes in the road and turning it into a muddy mess.  

“So wait for the next trade caravan,” the innkeeper suggests.  “One’ll be by in another few weeks.  Or cut back down the valley and take the train through the tunnel.”

“I don’t have the money for a ticket,” the traveler explains.  “And I can’t afford to wait.”

“Look, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life,” the innkeeper begins, and Magnus takes a quick drink of coffee to hide the twitch of his lips, because the innkeeper spends approximately eighty percent of her every day doing exactly that.  “But you _really_ shouldn’t try to cross the mountains alone.  None of the merchants do it--they all have hired guards, or they go together in a group of seven or eight so they can watch each others’ backs.  A single person traveling the pass is just asking to get robbed, or eaten by a direbear, or starving at the bottom of a hole with a broken ankle.  It’s been a hard winter; the mountains are crawling with bandits and hungry wild animals.”

“I have to,” the stranger says simply.  Magnus takes a closer look at this person who is so stubbornly and calmly preparing to walk into disaster.  They’re a short, slightly built person, with mossy dark hair and skin that shows just the faintest tint of sage green under its dusky brown.  They’re not wearing armor or any obvious weapons besides the long knife at their belt, but they also don’t have that sort of distant look in their eyes that magic users usually walk around with.

“What’s so important that you have to cross right away?” the innkeeper asks.

“My uncle’s funeral is in--” the stranger shuts their eyes for a moment, lips moving silently as they count, “--eight days.  He was like a father to me.  I _have_ to be there.”

The inkeeper shrugs broadly, dramatically broadcasting her non-endorsement of the traveler’s plan to anyone in the room who might be paying attention.  “It’s your risk, I suppose,” she says, then tries to upsell the traveler to a larger supply of provisions for the journey.  The morning’s entertainment finished, Magnus turns back to his breakfast.

But he can’t get the stubborn jut of the stranger’s chin out of his mind.  They’re brave and determined and foolhardy, and they’re _not_ going to make it.  Magnus knows the mountains--and it’s been a hard winter.

He shakes his head and focuses on his porridge.  The innkeeper mixes up her arithmetic in tallying up the provisions she’s selling the traveler, and the traveler quietly but firmly points out the error, even though it’s in their favor.  At the next table over, two locals in mud-splattered boots are already drinking, even though it’s still early morning.  The traveler carefully repacks their knapsack to balance the load, laying out tightly folded clothes and a tinderbox and a cooking pot and a canteen and other camping supplies across a small table in the corner.  The inkeeper complains to the farmer’s boy (a man in his thirties, doomed to be thought of as “the farmer’s boy” all his life) who delivers the day’s milk about the rising taxes in the province.

“I’m going up the pass today.”  

Magnus says it without thinking, loud enough to carry across the room--and he sees the traveler freeze in the middle of repacking their supplies.  Magnus doesn’t know why he did it, except for maybe the image of the stranger’s slender brown wrists, thin and breakable as twigs, jutting out from their sleeves as they paid for their provisions.

“I’m going up the pass,” Magnus says again.  “We should travel together.”

The traveler turns around slowly, seeming torn between relief and wariness.  “I mean no inconvenience,” they say softly.

Magnus shrugs.  “I’ve got . . .”  He was going to make up a reason to go over the mountains, some business to pursue in Neverwinter, but he doesn’t feel like lying.  Doesn’t have the energy for it.  Instead, “I’ve got nothing better to do,” he says honestly.

“I’d be very grateful if we could travel together,” the stranger says.  “But I can’t pay you.”

“Like I said, nothing better to do,” Magnus says.  “Let me get my things.”

By the time he packs up the clothes and miscellaneous scraps scattered around his room and settles his account with the innkeeper, the traveler is fully packed and waiting for him outside the inn door.  When Magnus joins them, they are scratching the ears of the largest and ugliest dog Magnus has ever seen.  It pulls toward Magnus, sniffing eagerly at his left hand, which hangs loose at his side.

“This is Brutus,” the traveler says.  “And my name is Isevine.”

“Magnus,” Magnus says.  “Let’s get moving.”

 

Magnus has traveled with a lot of people over the years, and they all have a different way of filling the miles.  Some people are talkers--joke-tellers, secret-sharers, yarn-spinners, argument-starters.  Others are collectors, filling their pockets with stones or rare flowers, or counting every new birdsong they hear.  One time, Magnus walked three days with a pair of monks who meditated with eyes half-closed the entire way.  Julia . . . she was a singer, planting her feet on the trail in time with a marching song, mimicking the wailing of the wind at the top of the pass with an ancient lament.

Isevine is a thinker, going deep inside their own head as the miles roll past, following the path with their eyes but seeming not to see it.  In a way, the quiet is nice, but it does leave Magnus (a long-established Talker) at loose ends.  He starts up a couple of conversations, and Isevine does respond, but their heart is clearly not in it, and to be honest, neither is Magnus’s.  He tries to sing and gives it up after three cracked notes.

To keep himself sane and firmly planted in the present, he decides to set himself a challenge, a game he can play as he walks: How many different animals can he spot?  At first, there’s almost too many to keep track of--squirrels and blue jays and sparrows and even a glimpse of a fox’s tail, disappearing into the brush.  But after an hour or two, he’s already logged every animal that comes across their path, and he needs to work harder to see any new species, straining his eyes to pick out distant birds of prey, scanning the glacial basins below for signs of elk and mountain sheep.

And that’s the only reason why he sees the bear.  It’s a huge beast, a mountain of muscle under thick, matted fur, but it’s still far enough away to be lost in the dappled shadows beneath the pine trees if Magnus hadn’t been actively scanning the woods for new creatures to add to his list.  

Wordlessly, he puts out an arm, and Isevine runs into it, and then stops.  To their credit, they don’t make any sound, though their face pinches in a look of confusion.  Magnus puts an unnecessary finger to his lips, then points out the bear.  Isevine’s eyes grow wide and they shift a little closer to Magnus’s side.

The bear is enormous--but it’s not a real threat.  It’s just sitting there, pawing through bushes that are probably laden with some kind of berry.  It stops from time to time to swat an inset away from its nose, but it’s too summer-lazy to even push itself to its feet.  Magnus feels a little silly at his intense caution.  They just need to double back and then bushwhack their way off the trail for a quarter-mile or so to pass above the patch of bushes the bear has staked out for itself.  There’s no need to worry.

Until Isevine’s big stupid dog goes charging past them, barking its head off.

“Brutus!” Isevine yelps, then claps a hand over their mouth.  The bear snorts, lifting its muzzle out of the bushes.  Its face is sticky with dark berry juice.  Brutus doesn’t seem to have any awareness of what an idiotic move it’s making; maybe it’s a city dog that doesn’t know about bears and other wild things.  Or maybe it’s just so used to being the biggest animal in the room it can’t imagine anything bigger than it.

Magnus thinks all this while running down the trail, his axe already in his hand.  He reaches Brutus about ten seconds before the dog would have flung itself through the air at the bear’s head and grabs the dog’s collar.  His boots skid in the dirt as the dog’s inertia drags them a few feet farther, and then they come to a halt.  Right in front of the biggest bear Magnus has seen in his life.

The bear’s surprise at this ridiculous attack has shifted into rage, and it swats at Magnus, who barely gets his shield up in time to be batted across the trail instead of losing an arm.  Brutus (thank the gods) yelps in alarm and runs back up the trail, then spins around, barking nervously.  

The bear roars at Magnus, showering him in spittle and the stench of old fish and sour berries.  Magnus jumps to his feet and roars back, banging his axe against his shield and trying to look as big and dangerous as possible.  He takes a step backward, still stretched to his full height.  Magnus _could_ fight the bear, but he doesn’t actually _want_ to--it’ll be messy, and risky, and the poor thing was just trying to eat a meal in peace.  Better to back away and leave it be, if it’ll let them.

Fortunately, the bear’s laziness is stronger than the affront Brutus made on it, and it lets them withdraw.  Magnus keeps his eyes fixed on it as he backs up the trail, and it watches him back, but it doesn’t move to pursue them.  Magnus shoos Brutus back toward Isevine, who hurriedly shushes him, and they all creep slowly backward.  When they’re almost to the first bend in the trail, the bear huffs once, then lumbers away through the brush.

Magnus holds his breath for a long minute, then turns around.  Isevine is pale and trembling, one hand pressed to their heart.  Brutus seems to have already forgotten the whole thing, and is busy digging up something dead from between the roots of a thick pine next to the trail.  Just for a second, Magnus feels a little spark of warmth to see them, whole and safe.  (The satisfaction of a job well done?  That doesn’t make sense; this isn’t even his job, not really.  He puts the wondering aside and tries to hold onto the feeling, no matter where it comes from--but it’s already gone.)

“You all right?” he asks, and Isevine ducks their head in embarassment.

“Sorry about Brutus,” they say through chattering teeth.

Magnus shrugs.  “It’s fine.  He was being a dog.”

“I th-thought dogs were naturally . . . good with this kind of thing?  They’re supposed to have instincts, and all that.  That’s why I brought him.  Everybody said I needed to have protection in the mountains, and I thought . . .”

“Some dogs have it, some don’t.  Just like people,” Magnus pointed out.  “Not to worry; I’m sure he’s got strengths of his own.”  

Isevine manages a weak smile.

 

The near miss releases some of the awkwardness between Magnus and this stranger he’s adopted, but it doesn’t make Isevine any more of a talker, and they walk in silence for the rest of the afternoon, then set up camp in silence, except for the small necessary conversations about where to pitch the tents and whether the stream is likely to have any fish.

They do talk a little over dinner, and Isevine talks about their work as a printer’s assistant in a small city in the valley.  Magnus doesn’t understand half of his companion’s descriptions of inking processes and quartos and folios, but he doesn’t mind listening.

“So, are you traveling for work?” Isevine asks, when printing has petered out as a conversation topic.

Magnus tilts his head back to look up at the stars, thinking about how to answer.  “Not really,” he says finally.  “I’m kind of . . . in between jobs.”

“Oh.”

He can hear the trepidation in Isevine’s voice, the suddenly raised walls of suspicion.  Well.  It’s a scary world, and if you’re not built like an ox or a master of the arcane arts, you have to walk carefully through it.  Magnus hurries to add an explanation that makes him sound a little less like a serial killer who lures his victims into the mountains.  “I used to be a carpenter--well, I mean, I guess I still am.  It’s just, my workshop . . . burned down.”

He picks up a stick and jabs at the fire, watching the sparks cascade up toward the heavens.  “And I don’t really want to do carpentry anymore,” he admits.  “Every time I pick up a piece of wood, I . . . I think about my wife.  I hear her voice, telling me to set it aside for her rocking chair.  We had this joke going, see, that I would build us a pair of rocking chairs for our old age, just like I built our wedding gazebo--and once we’d been married two years, she started claiming that we were getting old already, and would pretend to nag me about those chairs, and I’d pretend like I was going to refuse to even start them for another eighty years, and--she died in the fire,” he finished abruptly.

“I’m very sorry,” Isevine says quietly.

Magnus takes a long, deep breath.  “Anyway, I’m sort of--looking for a new career now.”

“Plenty of work in Neverwinter--that’s what everyone says, at least.”

“Maybe I’ll find something there,” Magnus says, trying to remember how to make a friendly smile.  He doesn’t think he’ll find anything anywhere.  But in that case, Neverwinter is as good a place as any to look.

Isevine stretches and yawns.  “We should probably get some sleep,” they sigh.  “Do we--do we need to take turns watching?”

“No, we’ll be fine.  Wild animals don’t usually attack humans--we’re not easy prey.  The only danger is taking them by surprise, and that won’t happen if we’re staying put.  And bandits mostly sleep at night, same as us.”

“Oh.”  Isevine blinks in surprise.  “All right.  Guess I’ll turn in then.”  They kick off their boots and, looking around a little awkwardly--a little adrift without their city bedtime rituals--crawl into their sleeping roll.

Out of nowhere, Magnus is struck by a sudden urge.  “Um.  Would it be okay--”

“Yes?”

“Can I pet your dog?”

Isevine smiles and Magnus realizes that up to this moment, they’ve never looked him straight in the eyes--they’ve always been focused on a point just _slightly_ down or to the side.  “Of course.”  They whistle for Brutus, and the big dog comes bounding up, eager and slobbery as ever.

Magnus holds out a hand to the dog.  Brutus licks it all over with his sandpaper tongue, then headbutts the hand until Magnus scratches him behind the ears.  With a sigh of happiness, the big dog plops down in Magnus’s lap, resting his chin on his thigh.  He’s slightly damp still from jumping in the stream, and his breath smells like dirt and fish and something a little bit rotten.  Magnus buries his fingers in the dog’s thick, shaggy fur.

It’s dark all around the little circle of firelight.  Isevine is curled up in their blankets, their back rising and falling slowly with their breathing.  Brutus snuffles happily, drooling into Magnus’s trousers leg, and Magnus scratches slowly up and down his neck.  And then all of a sudden, he’s crying.

This wasn’t supposed to happen, but now that he’s started, he can’t stop.  Big, fat tears roll down his nose and cheeks, and he hunches over the big stupid animal in his lap, breathing in its musty dog smell in between sobs.  He’s bawling like a baby, and he doesn’t even really know why (except that it’s about Julia--it will always, for the rest of his life, _always_ be about Julia), but Brutus is so big and warm and the night is so dark and there’s nothing he can do but weep.

 

They reach Neverwinter in seven days--just enough time for Isevine to make the funeral.  Magnus delivers them to their uncle’s country house on the outskirts of the city, and they pause there, one hand on the rusty metal of the gate.  They’re dirtier than they were when Magnus first saw them in the inn, and their sunburn is just starting to peel.  And they look a little more alive.

“Thank you,” they say, meeting Magnus’s eyes.  “Like I said, I’m sorry I can’t pay you, but . . . will you come in?  There’ll be plenty of food--it’s a funeral, after all--and I have a lot of aunts and great-aunts that would love to fuss over you.”

Magnus actually opens his mouth to accept, but then he shakes his head.  “I can’t do another funeral,” he mutters.  “Sorry . . . I--”

“I understand,” Isevine says.  “Well.  Thank you again.  I’m really, _really_ . . . I couldn’t have made it here without you.”

“Glad to have been able to help,” Magnus says automatically.  He hefts his bag to his back and turns to go, flicking a careless salute over his shoulder.

It’s not until he’s halfway down the lane (the sounds of Isevine being passed from aunt to aunt fading behind him) that he realizes he means it: He really is glad to have been able to help.  He’s glad _._  He _feels_ glad.

He tiptoes around the feeling, like trying not to spook a wild animal, avoids looking at it straight on--but as he makes his way through the gate of Neverwinter, the gladness is still with him.  A smile breaks across Magnus’s face.  It’s a little thing--he’s happy he was able to help someone who needed it--and it’ll likely be gone by the time night falls, but for right now, for _this moment_ , he feels something good.  He’d almost given up hope of this ever happening again.

 

One good hour doesn’t mean things will be good forever, and sure enough, the next evening Magnus finds himself on his hands and knees again, drooling blood into the trampled shit of another inn-yard after biting off way more than he can chew.  

It’s the same old story: Local louts bored of dicing and looking for some better entertainment; Magnus at the bar with his heart so full of feelings it feels ready to explode unless he finds a way to numb it for just a moment; an insult so casual it would have been a joke if it passed between different people.  There are four of them this time, but maybe Magnus is worn out from the week of traveling, because he barely manages to break a single nose before he hits the ground.  As he curls up to protect his guts from their boots, he wonders if he’ll ever learn a better way to cope, or if he’ll be picking stupid fights with guys much bigger than him even when he’s a white-haired old man of eighty.  For some reason, the thought strikes him as absolutely hilarious, and he finds himself laughing hysterically in between grunts of pain.  

Maybe the weird laughter made the assholes more aggressive than the otherwise would have been, or maybe he’s just unlucky, but there’s a good handful of minutes when Magnus isn’t exactly doing much.  Then things start to piece themselves back together and he drags himself to his hands and knees, staring stupidly at the imprint of his face in the dirt and wondering where he can get a slice of apple pie.  He must have done something to his wrist when he hit the ground, because it hurts like _fuck_ , and tears spring to his eyes as he eases himself up to a sitting position and looks up at the sky.

Night is falling, the sky above the inn all soft golds and purples, and he’s alone again in a world that doesn’t have Julia.  Magnus is wracked again by the familiar feeling that nothing in this vast and wild world is worth the pain.

But no--there _was_ a moment, however brief, when something did make sense, when it seemed like maybe there was a point to _something_.  The moment when he said goodbye to Isevine still shines in his memory, like a single star in a clouded sky.  He can’t remember how it felt, but he knows it _did_ feel different.  Maybe it will again.  

He sighs and starts to get up, then decides he doesn’t quite have the energy yet.  He settles back and looks up to watch for the first stars.

“Comfy down there?”

Magnus’s first thought, to his embarassment, is spirits; it’s only his second instinct to look around the innyard for an actual person, at which point he finally sees the slight figure who must have been sitting on the fence by the stable the whole time.  Between the falling darkness and the kick-induced fuzziness of his vision, Magnus can’t really see the person’s face, but he can just make out the shape of a tall, battered hat and a pair of pointed boots perched on the bottom rung of the fence.

“It’s not bad,” he allows.

“Looks awfully damp.”  The stranger slides off the fence and strolls toward Magnus.  “Surely it’s a little warmer inside the inn.”

“There’s also a lot more assholes inside,” Magnus points out.  He shrugs, wincing as he discovers new aches and bruises.  “But I guess there’s also more food.  And dry clothes.”

“Listen, let me buy you half a bottle of wine,” the stranger offers.

Magnus blinks up at him.  “Why?”

“Because I want the other half.”

“No, I mean--why the loser with the black eye?  There’s not anybody more . . . successful to drink with?”

“You remind me of--” the person’s forehead wrinkles for a moment, and Magnus’s inner voice wails _don’t ask about Raven’s Roost please don’t ask about Raven’s Roost_ ; then like a song with a missing beat, the stranger starts over: “You seem familiar.”

“One of those faces, I guess,” Magnus says quickly, pushing himself to his feet.

“I guess,” the stranger echoes, his voice distant.  Then he seems to snap back to reality.  “Taako the--well, I guess it's just Taako now--at your service.”

“Magnus.”

“Charmed.”  And Taako offers him a skinny arm clad in tattered velvet.  “Now let’s go somewhere with more wine.”

If this were a story, this would be the moment where Magnus gets rescued, where a good-hearted maiden or a kind stranger or a wise old man appears to bring light back into this world and drag Magnus up out of his despair.  But this is not a story, and this is not a rescue; this is just two lonely men sharing a bottle of wine in a cheap inn on the east side of Neverwinter.  And in any case, Magnus’s long trudge out of the darkness has already begun.


End file.
